


Breathe On, Sister

by Vehemently



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 15:49:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/750267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vehemently/pseuds/Vehemently
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What is it: An action scene. A mission statement. A sudden opportunity. Just something you <i>do</i>.<br/>Tagline: "-- up into the sky, and all I see is horror raining down --"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathe On, Sister

You spend enough time on the road, you get to seeing some crazy things. Truck drivers talk it over in the middle of the night, rig to rig, pimpled ham-radio teenagers weighing in from their exiles in Alaska, Wichita, Cheyenne. Sam listens to it sometimes, resetting the scanner (for once) away from the police band, when Dean is driving and they're too tired of each other for anything else.

It's five in the morning, and there turn out to be a lot of ham-radio teenagers in the greater New York area, or listening to those old-world accents, Sam realizes some of them aren't teenagers. A couple of codgers are talking over lights in the sky, their voices a bit fuzzy or maybe they've both been drinking. They fade in and out, faint, and after a little while Sam realizes it's the overpasses of the Long Island Expressway cutting off the signal.

"You remember that airliner at Idlewild? Lightning strike? Yeah, says who it was lightning?" says one of the voices. Sam has to cast backwards into his brain to realize that Idlewild is the forty-years-gone name for JFK airport. "I seen the debris, same as Far Rockaway. I know the truth."

"I am telling you," a strong Slavic accent, "they control the skies. All electric, and now, internet."

Dean makes a noise in the driver's seat, staring dully out the windshield. They are not quite alone on the highway, crazy upanattem businessmen in expensive cars and delivery trucks that smell like bread. It's still dim, though, long expanses of straight road as if they were in the middle of nowhere instead of the middle of Long Island. Dawn won't be for another hour.

The radio men argue, more out of cranky insomnia than anything else; they're like listening to Art Bell without the charm. It's a little irritating even to Sam, and that means it is driving Dean absolutely crazy. But he's just sitting there driving, both hands on the wheel, pretending he's not exhausted and pissed off rather than talk about the night's hunting. There wasn't anything they could have done to save that kid, not once the marsh-spirit grabbed him, but it's never a good night when they have to arrange a body to be found in the morning. Sam wiped down the poor kid's skin, his belt buckle, the professionally-frayed edges of his jeans, to make sure there wasn't any evidence. He arranged the guy on his side, sixteen? seventeen?, under an oak tree, as if he'd fallen out of it and broken his own neck, instead of having it broken for him. Dean will be in a shitty mood for at least the next three days.

Which is a good enough reason to spare him the ham-radio paranoia. Sam has his fingers on the squelch when it registers what the old man is saying: "-- up into the sky, and all I see is horror raining down --" Sam turns it off.

And then has to brace himself against the dash as Dean stomps on the brakes, right in the middle of the L.I.E., and the Impala fishtails a little in its lane as it screeches to a stop. "Mother. Fucker," Dean is mumbling to himself, not even aware of Sam's shock and annoyance. He hits the gas again, pulling a hard right, and they're on an offramp heading into a neighborhood before Sam can gather himself enough to ask,

"What the hell is going on?"

"Fuck," Dean says clearly, and then fumbles one-handed for the map. "This thing got any detail for around here? Count me off how many blocks I could see from the highway." He turns right, then left, and curses under his breath. All the roads are empty, at this hour. He turns right again.

Sam holds the map in his hands. It has none of the detail he is looking for. Dean turns left down a one-way street, going the wrong way. He is zigzagging, Sam realizes, running parallel to the highway, looking for something among the triple-decker houses. And then just as Dean curses again, Sam sees it too. The map falls out of his lap.

It's a house afire, shocking orange against the dim sky. The top floor is pretty well involved, flames in two windows and through a hole in the roof, and it looks like a wood frame, one of those imposing buildings with a flat roof and porches on every floor in the back. Dean squeals to a halt at the end of the block, just dropping her into park, and leaves the door open as he pops out and bounds up the front steps, two at a time. Sam pauses on the sidewalk, phone to his ear, and has to spin to find the street name and the number on the house. It's a cheap set of tin numbers tacked to the tar-colored siding, nothing fancy. He rattles off the situation and location to the dispatcher, breathless, and hangs up before she can ask any more questions.

Dean is banging on the two front doors, first one and then the other, bellowing at them to wake up and get out. It's not glass in those panes in the door, so he can bang all day long and won't get in or cut his hands. Sam pulls the keys and pops the trunk, fingers finding the hatchet without even needing to search. Sam glances around before shutting away their secrets, and grabs a coil of rope, just in case. He gallops up the steps just as Dean is attempting to kick open doors that are probably triple-deadbolted.

"Wake the neighbors, the neighbors," Dean shouts at him, and Sam hands him the hatchet and the rope. He vaults over the porch railing, and the neighbors are so close by he can just land right on _their_ porch and mash their doorbells, swearing to himself. Sam can hear the flames now, a quiet crackling like cellophane two rooms away and the whip of wind, somewhere away up above him, drowning out the highway traffic. It's strange, not being able to see it, or feel its heat. He is bouncing on his toes when an angry woman in a bathrobe peeks out the window at him.

"Fire," he calls to her. "House is on fire!" And that's a phrase everybody understands. She whips her black braid around as she turns and in another few seconds people are streaming out the front door: dopey half-awake kids in their underroos, a teenager fumbling with his cell phone, a man carrying a crying baby. Most of them are in their socks, or barefoot. The woman takes over ringing the doorbells to the upper floors, and Sam heads back to the burning building, and realizes Dean has managed to break one of the doors down.

The splinters are all over the porch, heavy gouges in the door lintel beside where the locks should be, and the door hanging wide, up to a staircase and the apartments up above. Someone pops out the other door, the one that isn't broken, and Sam doesn't even notice the baseball bat being brandished at him until after he's shouted, "Fire, get out, get out," and headed up the stairs.

Dean's bootprints are on the second-story door, about hip-height. A small elderly man has faded pajamas buttoned up to his neck and is staring bewildered, half-in half-out of his apartment. Sam doesn't bother telling him anything, as the fire alarm goes off above their heads suddenly. It's a piercing, irritating noise and it chases Sam up the stairs to the top floor, where Dean is still kicking and bellowing, hoarse now, and the fire licking and laughing not far away. The heat is real, the door just barely warm, and Dean breaks it down just as Sam arrives by his side.

There are no lights in the apartment, just the bright fire from the room on the right, crawling across the door lintel into the room they're looking at. Dean points and Sam obeys him instantly, banging through into the other rooms, staying low. There is smoke, but not that much smoke, just enough to stink. Bedroom, bedroom, bathroom. There isn't anybody in the rooms.

A window is open, out the back, and Dean grabs at Sam's arm as they register two kids on the back porch. A ten year old, braids dangling, and her younger brother or cousin or something, arms around each other, sitting curled up against the railing, shaking in silence. "HEY," Dean roars at them, as if the sound of the fire has made him deaf. "How many? How many people live here?" He points Sam at a closet door, pushes him on the shoulder when he doesn't do as he's told.

Dean is head-and-shoulders out the window, reaching to grab the girl, when she firms up suddenly and looks them over. She holds up fingers: four fingers. She says something at a whisper, and then tries again and finds her voice: "Mama and Ahmed. And Ali and me."

"Okay," Sam tells her, while Dean darts away. "Okay, girl, we'll find them for you. Now go on down the fire escape, can you do that? Take your brother and climb down the porch and go across the street and you'll be safe." Sam spends longer than he wants to making sure the girl understands, doesn't leave the window till she's over the porch railing, feet on the ladder. Sam is sweating, the flames shouting now like a crowd in a panic. He turns and Dean isn't in the room.

Coughing, Sam blunders back to the main hallway. The low ceiling is mostly alight now, so he's down at a crouch, back into the rooms he'd checked before, and oh there is Dean, yanking at something in the closet. He doesn't even bother yelling this time, just grabs into the darkness, grim, and comes up with a handful of long black hair. He pulls and over the billowing noise of fire Sam hears a screech. He reaches in to help Dean and together they wrestle a woman, a short, slim slip of a woman, who kicks and bites and screams at them in a language they don't know.

Sam stands and clasps her to his chest, overwhelming her with sheer size, and she bangs helplessly at his knees with bare heels. Dean is in the closet on hands and knees, and sits back suddenly with something on his shoulder. It's a child, of course, the missing Ahmed, a toddler with a face turned purple from howling in fear. Dean scrambles around and Sam drags the woman with him back towards the main hallway.

The flames are high, crisping picture frames on the walls. The woman is sobbing and pleading in Sam's arms as he crawls back towards the stairs. He can feel the delicacy of her wrist bones, grasped between the fingers of his left hand, and how they grind as she struggles. He does not waste air on telling her to shut up and let him rescue her. Dean has one hand on Sam's ankle as they cross the fiery room.

And then out and down, away from the smoke, and on the second-floor landing under the wailing alarm they wrestle with the woman again. Dean hands her the howling child, stuffs it into her arms to occupy her, and together they herd her down those last stairs and out into the crisp dim morning and a shower of freezing cold water.

Sam squawks, stunned, and Dean has to tug at him too, till they're off the porch and in the street. The man from the neighbors' house is dousing them with a garden hose, and after a minute he turns the spray back towards his own house, wetting down the siding. The firefighters are here, just now blocking off the street, great lumbering figures in yellow-gray looming up close and past and into the building they've just evacuated. "What the fuck are you doing," one of them shouts, in pure Brooklynese, grabbing at Sam's shoulder and handling him rougher than is necessary. They are gentle with the woman, her bare legs streaked black, her nightgown torn at some point during the fight. The child is still howling on her shoulder and she is howling too, pressing against the mass of the firefighter's coat, trying to get back into her burning apartment.

Against the early sky, the fire is a signal, a beacon, a red flag rampant in its own wind. It has all the front windows now, and has broken through more than one place in the roof. The firefighters herd Sam all the way across the street, Dean too, and they heave hard, cold breaths and spit, sinuses clogged. The crowd is fifteen or twenty people, all in pajamas and bathrobes and with wild hair in their eyes, and the little girl from the back porch appears from nowhere and grabs Sam's hand.

He has to sit on the curb, light-headed, and the girl sits with him. Dean crouches at his side, coughs twice, and lifts Sam's chin to check him over.

"I'm fine," Sam mumbles, but the firefighters are dragging over a first-aid kit, oxygen in a can, pressing the plastic mask to his face. He inhales once, twice, and pushes the mask at Dean.

Dean won't take it. He's got a blister on the top of his ear, and a couple more on the backs of his forearms. He wipes his face with his hands, spreading the soot around, and stares at the building. The hoses are limbered up now, unrolled all over the street, and the first real blasts of water hit the siding with a dull rumble. It's a lot more water than a garden hose can give.

"Your mom's freaking out," Sam tells the little girl. The woman is still screaming off and on, plucking at the sleeves of her neighbors, pointing at the sky. Somebody else is holding the child now. "How about you go let her know you and your brother are safe?"

"Okay," says the little girl. She stands up and straightens her nightgown before heading over to her mother. The crowd of neighbors envelopes her, hands on her shoulders and tangled in her hair as she disappears into the mass of the living.

"Why we always gotta be the ones dragging people out when they'd rather go back in and burn?" Dean says to himself, dull and hoarse. The smoke or his shouting has killed his voice completely. He hawks and spits again, into the gutter.

Sam sits there watching the flames feed, mesmerized by their leaping agile attack. The sky is just hinting at orange dawn, as if the whole world could catch on from this tiny blaze and burn to nothing. It is probably an electrical fire, Sam realizes, something in the kitchen like an automatic coffeemaker overloading the circuit. Nothing supernatural about it, just a housefire, just an ordinary housefire where the whole family might have died for no reason. It happens every day. "I'll be a fireman when the floods roll back," he mumbles.

Dean wipes his hands on his thighs, pulls himself together to stand again. "You want to run that one by me again?"

Sam shakes himself. "Nothing. An old Buffy quote. Nothing." They stand up, Sam a little wobbly but careful so Dean won't see it. The guy with the first-aid kit looks them over, wary, and they ignore him. There are stubbed toes and stuttering cold children, and he'll be busy soon enough.

"The real question is," Dean says, "did the fire trucks park us in?"

Sam looks around. There are an awful lot of people in the street, just staring at the fire and the water leaping to meet it, and trucks parked everywhere. Craning his neck, he can see the Impala, doors still open, sitting half in the street, just beyond the cordon of professional rescue. Having approached the scene wrong way down a one way street has put them in just the right place to disappear without being noticed. Sam fishes the keys from his pocket as they ease their way gently out of the middle of things. No point hanging around long enough for anyone to notice or remember. "You saw it from the highway?"

"Yeah," says Dean, and doesn't elaborate. Sam saw nothing from the highway, but he can imagine it: that startling leap of orange illuminating a dark, sleeping neighborhood, desperate for attention. They've seen fire enough to know it intimately.

"Where'd you leave the hatchet?" Sam asks.

"Fuck. It's still in the front door. Rope's on the porch."

Sam sits in the passenger seat, pulls the door closed. With Dean sitting next to him the car smells like sweat and burn. Without consulting each other, they both start rolling down their windows at once.

"Breakfast in New Jersey, then? They can't get around to printing it till noon, and when they do, we can be five states away." Sam isn't sure whether a soaking wet wooden handle could even give up prints.

"Give that damn FBI guy something to scratch his head over."

Sam chuckles a little at that, while Dean pulls out back into early morning traffic. It turns into a cough, and Sam can't continue the conversation.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "It's a Fire" by Portishead.
> 
> This story was remixed in 2008, by Wanttobeatree: [Breathe On, Sister (They Pass Me By remix)](http://remixredux08.livejournal.com/56602.html)


End file.
